1% of iPod Touch users upgrade to 3.0, resistance will be futile

To be honest, we were taking aback that the new iPhone 3GS sold several jillion units in its first few days. Plenty of mentalist Apple fanboys defied all laws of common sense and paid to cancel their existing 3G contracts, signed up to another 18 month contract - that'll still have six months to run when the next handset is released - then spent even more money on the 3GS handset itself. There were plenty of new customers too, but when the 3G is far cheaper (or free) and the 3GS failed to offer a huge amount of new functionality, well. People are stupid, as has often been noted.

We're not surprised, however, that next-to-none of the millions of iPod Touch owners have bothered downloading the new 3.0 firmware. Advertising firm AbMob, which places ads into iPhone applications, reports that they're seen just 1% of activity from iPods with 3.0 firmware since it was released a fortnight ago.

There are probably two key reasons: while it's free to iPhone owners, those with a Touch have to fork out £6, and because most of what the 3.0 update has to offer is next-to-pointless for an iPod. The fact is that nearly all the new features in Apple's new firmware (and there are plenty of them) are only of use if you have a regular wi-fi connection - otherwise there's little to enhance the user's experience of music, video or applications.

It's a well and truly dropped bollock by Apple, but you can bet your life that they'll find a way to squeeze the money out of you; sooner or later there'll be a mandatory iteration that'll render your iPod obsolete without it. Alternatively, Apple could get off their fat collective arses and work on some improvements that are worth paying for.

Yeah, got to agree with Dan here, it's VERY easy to get it for free and I suspect many will do just that (esepcially us first gen owners who've already paid for 2.0 and who get even less benefit than the second gen users).
That being said, I don't think this particular figure is correct. The company in question is refering to Ad's placed in certain applications but, as the iPod Touch isn't permanently on-line, I can't help but wonder how many iPod's have applications that use this particular service installed. Basically, they're sampling the whole user base so for this figure to have any relevance we'd need to know what percentage of activity comes off iPod Touch units overall, then see that broken down by OS. Without that information this is a useless statistic really.

Well I'm one of the 1%. I use my iPod Touch online a lot and really wanted the copy and paste functionality.
I really wasn't happy though about having to fork out 6 quid for a firmware upgrade when it seems every other company on the planet gives such things away for free. That's Apple for you though.

just because the ad company has seen 1% activity does not necessarily mean that only 1% have downloaded, surely? It is a ballpark indicator but I'm sure actual figures will be higher. They will only record the people who use the apps with adverts in.

@mark
“It’s an accounting requirement that if you upgrade a device that’s not on a subscription, you have to charge,” Needham and Company financial analyst Charles Wolf said. “Apple has a choice of what to charge, but they have to charge.”
When you count the inevitable credit card charges, they're not making as much as you may think. Yes they could charge tuppence, but that obviously wasn't that tempting for Apple.

I have an ipod touch and upgraded cause I want safari to work better and that stupid nag screen that happens every time you plug in to sync. The update is horrible, Ipod is now very laggy with a large playlists that worked fine on the previous model. Poor show apple.

LOL! You have to pay for a firmware update? and mactards actually pay it? hahahahahahaha!
I love OSX, but the idiocy of the average apple fanboy is astounding. And the more they pay it the more apple will keep ripping them off.
I'll stick to rockbox - a free software replacement for a few different MP3 players (including some ipods), which is vastly superior to anything else out there.

Man the update sucks big .... I should have never got an iPod touch it sucks. My psp is waaay better and I already had to get this piece of .... Repaired. The screen is small hard to type I could go on forever. And those fucktards want me to pay for an update?! I think updates are supposed to enhance, make the product better but... Apple wants to charge even for that? Fuck you Steve jobs go pick some fucking apples and pears or something but you are not getting my money.

Lots of of bloggers aren't very happy with the new iPad.There was 2 much hoopla over it and alot people got disapointed.Quite frankly, I for one see some of the cool potential uses of the device. Third-party applications for playing tunes, games, papers and magazine and FFS books, tons of awesome stuff, but IMHO they failed to sell it very well (aside from the books). It feels rather not finished